Thursday, July 8, 2010

So 50 Roshei Yeshiva called this very urgent meeting last (Tuesday) night, where they discussed a very burning issue. The issue was concerning a very distressing trend, where good bachurim make very high demands of prospective shidduchim - hundreds of thousands of dollars, often, as well as an apartment in one of the big cities. The tattes that want these good bocherim often have no choice - I guess NEEDING to have the best bocher leaves you no choice... - and commit themselves to raising that money; mostly, or completely, by shnorr aktzyes. After all, who's little princess isn't worth getting a heart attack over... The end result is utter catastrophe, as you can all well imagine. You have old men shlepping to chutz La'Aretz several times a year to collect money for children who have eyniklach of their own because they had to promise astronomical sums to these bachurim'lach ages ago. If you have a large family - G-d help you, you'll never, ever get out of debt. Not in a million years. OK, so they decided that they need to bring an end to this. Very good, you say, right? The only problem is this:

They're the ones who created this system!!!!

Part of the great solution to this problem has been a group called - get this - שהשמחה במעונו, where if you join this group you commit yourself to not spending more than 40K(!) per child when marrying them off ----------- These yungeleit, who happen to be from Kolel Ponovezh, decided that enough was enough, and that they're taking action, so as to save - literally - fathers from dying of heart attacks. Forty Thousand Dollars per child. Read that again. Now ask yourself: where does a kolel yungerman, or a successful American businessman for that matter, have forty thousand dollars to spend every year for several years?! He needs to marry off children one after another very often, he has that money sitting around somewhere? from his Kolel check? So why is Forty thousand OK to ask for, but seventy five not? The point is that the whole system is a death wish, starting from the not working to the expecting big money come wedding time. I can understand the learning MiToch HaDchak, but who came up with the one-two punch of not working and needing to spend money come Shidduchim?!

I haven't heard what these Roshei Yeshiva decided, but I imagine that no great resolutions were passed. Nothing revolutionary, that is. It wasn't decided that bachurim should go to the army and go to work, and rightfully so. It wasn't decided that young couples need to move out of town and only rent apartments, not have their parents buy them, like the Lev Simcha of Ger did years ago. Maybe they adopted a resolution similar to the Simcha B'Meono group, where they limit the amount that each side spends. Is that enough? Maybe there's something I'm missing here. Maybe there's an unlimited amount of money in Israel and I'm just not in on it. Maybe to raise/collect/borrow/shnorr forty thousand a year 7-810-12 times is no big deal for the people of Yerushalayim and Bene Beraq. Vos veis ich? I hope you realize why I used that proverb in this post. I just didn't see the avlah in asking for 100 thousand. If you can't afford it don't commit to it, just like a house or a car.

6 comments:

Anonymous
said...

...and I just came from reading the shmutz about LeBron James and his demands for granting the privilege, THE PRIVILEGE, to any basketball team to pay him $20 million a year. And there was a bidding war among the NBA teams!

These spending caps are just to simultaneously generate praise from the sycophants- "Look how wise the gedolei hador are!!"- while also absolving themselves of any responsibility for the excessive spending.

Its interesting to note that those whose conversation is full of phrases like meimes azmom beohelo shel Torah, are seemingly unwilling to sacrifice their own gashmius.Tell me how many graduate students in the secular world including medical students and law students get a "complete" when they are married. Most live in a rented apt with used furniture and drive an old car and the women don't need to dress like Queen Elizabeth when going to the grocery.So much talk about this world being a prozdor to the real world yet the prozdor is well furnished and is kept up in the most fancy of manners. One wonders what these people think the "real world" is like ? town cars, new suits, POmegranate ... trips to Israel every day etc etc ...Several yaers ago Rav Gershon Leibman died in Paris. The holy Yated reported this event with a long article among others noting that R. Gershon slept underneath the steps in the yeshiva in a cot and more often than not ,would put himself ina grave to see how it felt ...Turn the page of the Yated and you had full page ads for new dwellings in Whispering Willows in lakewood starting at 700,000 dolllars.Am I missing something or was I not zeyche to pick up the true daas tore ?

Of course you are missing something. We are dealing with malchus. For them not to decorate their waiting room in a matter befitting royalty is a bizayon. Unfortunately their are too many royal contenders.

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א יונגערמאן אין עולם הזה trying to do what's right. The purpose of this blog was to provide a counter opinion to the Chabad bashing that is so prevalent in blogosphere. I hope I've accomplished that objective. This is the blog for you if you have a decent knowledge of Jewish history and current events.